Alternate US States

[Communists For McCain]

I would've expected Carter and Mondale to win East Coast and Rio Grande...

What state is East Coast?

Rio Grande would've gone Democrat if it didn't go so much to the north and east (into OTL central Texas).

[Californian Tony]

What state is East Coast?

Isn't it evident ??

The western part of OTL California

[Communists For McCain]

What state is East Coast?

Isn't it evident ??

The western part of OTL California

Going off the map of California for 1980 and 1984, it looks like Reagan won all but San Francisco and a few other counties. Going off his margin of victory in the state as a whole I concluded that he was popular enough to have won all three states that constitute California IOTL. Maybe I'm grossly underestimating the size of San Fran and those few other counties, but Reagan's margins of victory suggests he won a decisive victory on the West Coast. With the exception of some minority groups, very few people could match the sellability of Reagan (I would argue he was even more so than Nixon and LBJ who won landslides against extremists), who won the biggest electoral landslide since FDR 1936 IOTL against a candidate who may not have been moderate, but who was I believe didn't even approach the region of extremism. Although Reagan won less than 60% of the popular vote, his effectiveness in winning every state besides Minnesota (and in this case New York) suggests that he had a definite wide appeal to a majority of the electorate. In fact, IRL the biggest shock (from what I have seen from youtube) was that Mondale won Minnesota. There were newstations predicting that Reagan had a real possibility to win ALL 50 STATES, not just win the election. There was even footage of Reagan joking "I'm really concerned about my chances at re-election!" (crowd laughs).
Sorry if this seems like a long winded rant, just making my case as to why Carter and Mondale probably wouldn't win West Coast or Rio Grande (it would be very close though).

[Californian Tony]

What state is East Coast?

Isn't it evident ??

The western part of OTL California

Going off the map of California for 1980 and 1984, it looks like Reagan won all but San Francisco and a few other counties. Going off his margin of victory in the state as a whole I concluded that he was popular enough to have won all three states that constitute California IOTL. Maybe I'm grossly underestimating the size of San Fran and those few other counties, but Reagan's margins of victory suggests he won a decisive victory on the West Coast. With the exception of some minority groups, very few people could match the sellability of Reagan (I would argue he was even more so than Nixon and LBJ who won landslides against extremists), who won the biggest electoral landslide since FDR 1936 IOTL against a candidate who may not have been moderate, but who was I believe didn't even approach the region of extremism. Although Reagan won less than 60% of the popular vote, his effectiveness in winning every state besides Minnesota (and in this case New York) suggests that he had a definite wide appeal to a majority of the electorate. In fact, IRL the biggest shock (from what I have seen from youtube) was that Mondale won Minnesota. There were newstations predicting that Reagan had a real possibility to win ALL 50 STATES, not just win the election. There was even footage of Reagan joking "I'm really concerned about my chances at re-election!" (crowd laughs).
Sorry if this seems like a long winded rant, just making my case as to why Carter and Mondale probably wouldn't win West Coast or Rio Grande (it would be very close though).

Sad but entirely true.

[Χahar]

Bump!

[Californian Tony]

Bump!

Sorry, I'm really too busy with school and Atlasia..

I can post Maryland, but I can't go farther before a few months...

[DariusNJ]

Allegheny would have been extremely close in 2004.

Gore probably won it in 2000.

[Californian Tony]

Hi there ! I've left this thread for much time, while it seemed to be pretty popular at the time. Well, I think it's high time to restart it ! I'm very curious to know how this will end up in terms of electoral map, thus I've already started working on the next States.

But before all, I wanted to study more deeply a topic I had neglected before : population an electoral votes. After some big works with excel spreadsheets, I now publish a detailed list of what would be each State's population at the 2000 Census, at the number of congressional seats it would result in. Note that I used State population, and didn't include overseas population as does the Census, for the simple reason I have no clue how it would be dealt between States. Also to note that the total is 436, due to inclusion of DC in Maryland.

State	Population	CDs
California del Sur	19,329,839	30
New York	12,689,665	20
Michigan	9,620,828	15
South Florida	9,568,583	15
Chicago	9,312,255	14
West Coast	8,496,308	13
New Jersey	8,414,350	13
Georgia	8,186,453	13
North Carolina	8,049,313	12
North Texas	7,419,327	12
Massachusetts	7,397,416	11
Pennsylvania	7,317,947	11
Texas	7,183,333	11
Virginia	7,078,515	11
Maryland	6,652,145	10
Ohio	6,558,359	10
North Florida	6,413,795	10
Adirondack	6,286,792	10
Rio Grande	6,249,160	10
California	5,853,806	9
Tennessee	5,689,283	9
Missouri	5,595,211	9
Wisconsin	5,531,714	9
Indiana	5,294,408	8
Arizona	5,130,632	8
Washington	5,075,758	8
Allegheny	4,963,107	8
Minnesota	4,919,479	8
Erie	4,794,781	7
Louisiana	4,468,976	7
Alabama	4,447,100	7
Colorado	4,301,261	7
Illinois	4,042,692	6
Kentucky	4,041,769	6
South Carolina	4,012,012	6
Big Sky	3,685,492	6
Oklahoma	3,450,654	5
Connecticut	3,405,565	5
Oregon	3,244,200	5
New England	3,119,536	5
Dakota	3,108,307	5
Iowa	2,926,324	5
Mississipi	2,844,658	4
Kansas	2,688,418	4
Arkansas	2,673,400	4
Utah	2,233,169	3
Nevada	2,189,952	3
New Mexico	1,819,046	3
West Virginia	1,808,344	3
Hawaii	1,211,537	2
Alaska	626,932	1

I've used the same red-blue-green color key as usual in this thread.
I have also deeply modified the opening post, in order to correct State names I've modified, new (and precise) EV totals coming from this work, as well as some English mistakes I made because I was quite new at the time ().

[Californian Tony]

Well, it was popular once...

[izixs]

I actually really like this project. So don't feel discouraged! Tis many a lurker about who likes good stuff.

[Eleden]

Yes please continue.

[Californian Tony]

Thanks guys for your encouragements.

Anyways, here is the EV map of the new US States :




And some interesting effects of the new apportionmebnt, in terms of gains of representatives.

Gains :
- New York and Adirondack have together 30 Representatives, while RL New York State had only 29.
- Texas, Rio Grande and North Texas have together 33 Representatives, while RL Texas had only 32.
- With the territory take to Michigan, Wisonsin gains a seat even though Michigan desn't lose any.
- With the territory the lost to BS, WA loses only one and OR doesn't lose any. However, BS's 6 Representatives are two more than the total Idaho+Montana+Wyoming.

Losses :
- Massachussets has only 11 Representatives, while the sum of RL MA and RI would have given 12.
- The sum of Erie's and Ohio's Representatives is 17, even though RL Ohio had 18.
- Weirdly, North Carolina loses a Representatives even though its territory remains unchanged, getting 12 instead of 13.
- The sum of CA, WC and CS gives only 52 Representatives, even though RL California had 53.

[Californian Tony]

And now we get back to States with Maryland.

Maryland

With the inclusion of Delaware, and above all DC, Maryland becomes even more solidly democratic than it used to be. With this new State, democrats would have 12 Electoral Votes totally ensured. However, the fusion of three solid democratics States would effectively make them lose 4 EVs.
Annapolis should probably remain the capital of the new State.

MD county map :


Barack Obama : 2,130,726 (64.37%) => 12 EVs
John McCain : 1,129,603 (34.13%)
Others : 49,736 (1.50%)


LNPI : +22.98 => dem stronghold.
With a similar LNPI, McCain couldn't hope to with the state without breaking the 60% threshold nationwide. DC alone brings 5 more points to the State's LNPI, so that it becomes one of the few democratic strongholds (IRL, only 4 States could be qualified as "dem strongholds" : DC, HI, VT and RI). Still, none of the 3 former States was really close enough to be in danger for democrats, so that merging them would rather favor Republicans. As a result, 4 EVs will be taken to the democrats.

[Communists For McCain]

Yeah this project is awesome (which is why I raped this thread with my own electoral maps for previous elections in this hypothetical).

As a fan of making excel sheets with electoral data on it (I spent hours complying my presidential results spreadsheet), I demand you proceed.

[Californian Tony]

Yeah this project is awesome (which is why I raped this thread with my own electoral maps for previous elections in this hypothetical).

BTW, you could also continue your maps of past elections meanwhile. 1990's and early 2000's maps could be quite interesting.

[Californian Tony]

Erie

Ohio is, with Florida and Texas, the only RL Republican-leaning State to be split. Erie is supposed to be the "liberal" part of the State, and thus is naturally the smallest of the two. Mostly a coastal State (hence its name, from the homonymous lake), Erie concentrates Ohio's most democratic counties. As a result, it reveals to be very solidly democratic, comparable to Pennsylvania in terms of Presidential results. Even though it weighs only 9 EVs, it represents a significative bonus for Obama.
The State's natural capital would be Cleveland, though it's possible to immagine that they could pick a smaller city.

ER county map :


Barack Obama : 1,408,902 (58.98%) => 9 EVs
John McCain : 936,307 (39.20%)
Others : 43,409 (1.82%)


LNPI : +12.52 => solid dem.
This huge score makes Erie even more democratic than Pennsylvania (the new one), even though Obama polls slightly less because of a good performance of others. To give an idea, the RL state more similar to both ER and PA is Connecticut. As a results, it's 9 new EVs which are taken to a lean rep state and become solidly deomcratic. Of course, this only partly compensates for the loss of Allegheny's EVs, but it's a further proof that my redrawing won't benefit too massively to one party. Of course, the remaining 12 EVs of Ohio will be a solid guarantee for Republicans either, so that Ohio's status of "swing State" is totally destroyed. We can now predict that democrats will gain 9 EVs, and Republicans will lose 8.

[Vosem]

Interesting -- keep going.

[Californian Tony]

Ohio

Unsurprisingly, the remaining part of Ohio, with its 12 Electoral votes, is staunchly Republican. John McCain wouldn't have any problem to win it, like almost every republican candidate before him. There is not much to add, except repeating that we have "polarized" a State which was considered as a bellwhether.
Columbus would remain the State's capital.

OH county map :


John McCain : 1,741,513 (52.25%) => 12 EVs
Barack Obama : 1,531,142 (45.94%)
Others : 60,542 (1.82%)


LNPI : -13.58 => solid rep.
Funny to find with Erie/Ohio almost exactly the same dichotomy we found with Pennsylvania/Allegheny. Two solid democratic States and two solid republican States replace a dem-leaning and a rep-leaning State. Each time the LNPI is comprised between +/-11 and +/-14. Anyways, Ohio is nonetheless the most republican of the four, and with a similar LNPI is almost an impossible target for Dems. Not a bad thing however, considering for example that in 2004 Kerry wouldn't have to worry about OH (having already secured ER) and could focus on closer States such as Nevada and Wisconsin. However, the split of Ohio won't entirely compensate for Pennsylvania's. If we make the net gain/loss for those two splits, it results in a gain of 1 EV for Democrats and a gain of 2 for Republicans. Thus, it looks fairly balanced for the moment. BTW, interestingly, the percentage of "others" in 2008 was exactly the same in ER and OH.

[big bad fab]

Still time to cut California del Sur in 2 or 3, so that you've got real similar EVs.
San Diego and the Mexican frontier; LA; maybe the inner south.

BTW, glad to see it restarted.

[Californian Tony]

Still time to cut California del Sur in 2 or 3, so that you've got real similar EVs.
San Diego and the Mexican frontier; LA; maybe the inner south.

Well, it's true that CS is significantly bigger than most of other States, but I think it makes more sense geographically to keep it united.
On the same subject, I once considered to merge Alaska and Hawaii (as they are the two smallest States), but it would have been a geographical aberration and would have made any local government impossible.

[N.i.K.]

This is excellent!

[Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey]

This is excellent!

[Χahar]

California del Sur and Big Sky could really use better names.

[cope1989]

Can I request that metro atlanta be it's own state? It would be interesting to see who won it in 2008? A growing minority population coupled with conservative white suburbs would make it close for sure.

[Bo]

Addition: Saudi-Israelia